Desert Island Discs

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Sir Howard Stringer. Now Chairman of the Board and formerly CEO of Sony, he was surely the only Chief Executive who was a decorated Vietnam vet as he knelt before the Queen to be knighted. It gives you something of an idea of the breadth and height of his achievements. Born in Cardiff he went to 11 different schools before his 16th birthday and it clearly gave him restless feet. In the mid-sixties he headed to America where his first job was answering phones for the Ed Sullivan Show. He loved TV and it felt the same about him. He's won a raft of Emmys for his productions and worked with all the big beasts of the broadcasting jungle including Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and David Letterman.He has spent the last few years commuting between New York, Tokyo, London and Hollywood - the first and so far only westerner to run the Japanese giant Sony.He says - "I think I'm a bit prone to new adventures. The same damned impulse that got me in trouble by sending me to America in the first place compels me to take challenges when offered them."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the designer and businesswoman, Anya Hindmarch.Given her first handbag by her mother at 16, she knew that her future lay in fashion. At 18 she went to Florence to immerse herself in Italian style, and ended up deep in the world of Florentine leather, getting samples made up of a duffel bag she'd spotted. An initial run of 500 bags sold out. Fast forward 25 years and her eponymous fashion business is globally successful with her designs much sought after.She's also known for her conscience and designed a canvas tote called "I'm not a plastic bag" as part of an environmental campaign to highlight our over use of plastic bags.She combines all this with a hectic family life. She met and subsequently married a widower 12 years her senior when she was 25. He had 3 children aged under 5 and they've added a further two to the clan.She says her life is like "juggling and dancing while having one arm and one eye at the same time".Producer: Alison Hughes.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Dawn French. Her career started back when dungarees were considered a legitimate fashion choice and she's built her reputation on borderline surreal skits and glowingly warm characterisations. Brought up in a forces family she had to move schools a lot and found making people laugh helped to make them her friends. Since then it's made her a household name and she may be moments away from becoming a 'national treasure'. Double act partner, sit-com star, sketch show performer, writer, actor, Dawn has made us laugh for years. So does she ever feel overwhelmed by people's expectations? She says "I tell myself that I'm the sort of person who can open a one-woman play in the West End, so I do .... I am the sort of person who writes a book - so I do".Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the nun, writer and broadcaster Sister Wendy Beckett.For over 40 years she's lived the life of a hermit, rising every day at midnight to spend seven hours praying. Her home is a caravan in the grounds of a Carmelite Monastery where she spends her days in silence - speaking only once a day to the nun charged with delivering her daily food rations of skimmed milk, cold cooked vegetables and two rice crackers.Her self-imposed isolation has only been broken by the - frankly rather unlikely - occurrence of a television career. She is the nun who knows about art and her passionate and pithy critiques of the world's great works and hidden treasures have won her many devoted fans. With decades of solitude and prayer under her belt she seems, unlike nearly every other guest, to be perfectly cut out for a stretch alone on a desert island.She says "It's my apostolic duty to talk about art. If you don't know about God, art is the only thing that can set you free". Producer: Christine Pawlowsky.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles. After flirting with Communism in his teens he joined the Conservative party and enjoyed a heady rise through local politics, heading up Bradford City Council in the 1990s. He tells Kirsty about his early life above a shop in Keighley, how Mrs Thatcher got him an interview to be a candidate for MP, and how a prolonged hug from David Cameron softened the blow of a disastrous appearance on Question Time.Producer: Alison Hughes.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Dustin Hoffman.In spite of his Aunt Pearl telling him he wasn't good looking enough to be an actor for the past forty-five years he's been crafting landmark movie performances. He is that rare and apparently contradictory thing - a character actor and a superstar. The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Lenny, All The President's Men, Marathon Man, Kramer v Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Wag The Dog, and Last Chance Harvey are just a handful of the movies that contribute to an unparalleled body of work: he is the only actor in history to have top billing in three films that won Best Picture Oscars. Now in his mid-70s he is making his directorial debut.He says "I'm always fighting to break through... I'm trying to show you the part of me that wants to love, wants to kill, that wants to find my way out, that feels there is no way out."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway is the artist and author, Edmund de Waal. His ceramics are on display in many of the world's major museums. They're delicate pots in shades of white and cream, informed he says by a great deal of thinking about literature. His written work has also won him several awards; his book "The Hare With Amber Eyes" traces the rich and dramatic story of his family's Russian Jewish heritage and the diaspora in Odessa, Paris, Vienna, and Tokyo.He says, "I make pots and I write. I'm not one of those people who by mistake became a potter or by mistake is a writer - they are both completely entwined."Producer: Isabel Sargent.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the director, producer and writer, John Lloyd.His work has been making us laugh for over thirty years: Spitting Image, Not The Nine o'Clock News, Blackadder and QI are just a handful of the programmes he's helped to create. If the comedy work ever dries up he could open a shop selling second hand Baftas - he's won a stack of them and a Grammy and an Emmy.Which isn't to say it's been an easy ride - fall outs, multiple sackings and missed opportunities have peppered his stellar career in comedy. He says, "I like starting things ... there are starters and finishers in life, that's the great divide ... I like the fight and the passion and the difficulty - well I don't like it, but it's what I do".Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway is the critic, actress, and producer Blanche Marvin. Blanche has been immersed in the theatre for seven decades. She worked with James Mason, Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr and Peter Ustinov and calmed the nerves of Tennessee Williams. She brought Samuel Beckett to an American audience and persuaded Peter Brook to launch a series of awards to encourage artistic risk-takers. A doyenne of the West End, she's at nearly every opening night and her reviews are read by producers on Broadway - looking for the next hit that could cross the Atlantic. She says: "people say, how can you go to the theatre for 50 years and still be enthusiastic? Every time I go, I think, Oh, I'm going to see something, I'm going to be surprised!"Producer: Isabel Sargent.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is businessman Tidjane Thiam.He's chief executive of the Prudential, but he's about as far from the archetypal "man from the Pru" as you can get. The seeds of his success were sown amid the complex political terrain of the Ivory Coast with an extended family heavily involved in politics and a father imprisoned for his beliefs. His life quickly took on an international flavour from West Africa to Morocco, Paris to Washington, but in his early 30s a coup in his homeland left him high and dry. He says "I had no job, no career, nothing at all. It taught me a lot about myself. If you've been in a situation where you have nothing there's nothing much you're afraid of."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.